Sarah Kennedy, Ph.D.

Persons excluded due to ethnicity or race (PEERs) leave STEM at disproportionate rates; therefore, efforts to engage undergraduate PEERs are critical to creating a diverse STEM workforce. Through a Howard Hughes Medical Institute funded Inclusive Excellence grant (HHMI-IE), the REALISE (REALizing Inclusive Science Excellence) program was developed with the goal to increase student retention and success. As part of this project, an extensive faculty development program, including a backward course design module, workshops on microaggressions and implicit bias, and teamwork training, was created to help faculty implement inclusive pedagogy strategies. There were 33 faculty members who participated in the trainings within faculty learning communities (FLCs) and were further supported with STEM-Education (STEM-Ed) reading groups, faculty mixers, minigrants, and engagement from the Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning (CITL). Evaluation of 10 faculty members’ change narratives and reflective prompts revealed that low-stakes opportunities such as STEM-Ed reading groups had the most influence for instituting learner-centered classroom practices, and the workshops on microaggressions and implicit biases prompted faculty to create opportunities to build respectful relationships with students. Here, we share lessons learned from our program evaluation so that others can successfully implement inclusive pedagogy in chemistry.

General chemistry laboratory curriculum reform is underway at a midsized state university through a collaborative, inclusive, and iterative approach. Using a backward design approach, faculty collaborated to actualize a shared vision, define laboratory learning objectives, and outline considerations for inclusivity during summer workshops that guided the process of curriculum design. With support from an instructional designer from the Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning, as well as faculty development support through an HHMI Inclusive Excellence grant, the faculty have designed and implemented the new curriculum, assessed the implementation, and continue to make iterative change based on student data and reflection. The goal of this report is not to provide a new set of chemistry laboratories, rather, we share our framework to provide an example of how to implement a collaborative and inclusive laboratory redesign.

Inhibiting the digestive enzyme α-glucosidase will slow the release of free glucose in the blood stream. This inhibition is one important strategy to treat sugar-related diseases such as diabetes. Since a 3-D structure of Saccharomyces cerevisiae α-glucosidase has not yet been solved, study of inhibition must be done through in silico creation of a structural model. Therefore, a new homology modeled structure of Saccharomyces cerevisiae α-glucosidase was built based on the most recent crystal structure of S. cerevisiae isomaltase (PDB: 3A47). This new model was used to dock five known natural α-glucosidase inhibitors to explore the putative allosteric drug binding pockets. Examination of the docking simulations and in silico mutagenesis revealed a potential druggable pocket for binding and a critical lysine residue capable of thermodynamically favorable binding with the inhibitors. In order to support the data analyzed from the docking simulation a series of inhibition assays were conducted on the wild-type enzyme and did show allosteric inhibition of α-glucosidase. These experiments contribute to a deeper understanding of the molecular level interactions required to inhibit this sugar metabolizing enzyme.